It's often said that you can tell a lot about a person by looking at what's on their bookshelves. What do my bookshelves say about me? Well, when I asked myself this question a few years ago, I made an alarming discovery. I'd always thought of myself as a fairly cultured, cosmopolitan sort of person. But my bookshelves told a rather different story. Pretty much all the titles on them were by British or North American authors, and there was almost nothing in translation. Discovering this massive, cultural blind spot in my reading came as quite a shock.
Pogosto pravijo, da lahko veliko poveš o človeku po tem, kaj ima na knjižni polici. Kaj pravijo moje knjižne police o meni? No, ko sem si pred nekaj leti postavila to vprašanje, sem odkrila nekaj šokantnega. Vedno sem se imela za precej kultivirano, svetovljansko osebo. A moje knjižne police so pripovedovale drugačno zgodbo. Praktično vse so napisali britanski ali severnoameriški avtorji in skoraj nič ni bilo prevedeno. Ko sem odkrila to ogromno slepo pego v svojem branju, sem bila precej šokirana.
And when I thought about it, it seemed like a real shame. I knew there had to be lots of amazing stories out there by writers working in languages other than English. And it seemed really sad to think that my reading habits meant I would probably never encounter them. So, I decided to prescribe myself an intensive course of global reading. 2012 was set to be a very international year for the UK; it was the year of the London Olympics. And so I decided to use it as my time frame to try to read a novel, short story collection or memoir from every country in the world. And so I did. And it was very exciting and I learned some remarkable things and made some wonderful connections that I want to share with you today.
In ko sem premišljevala o tem, se mi je zdelo škoda. Vedela sem, da mora obstajati veliko neverjetnih zgodb pisateljev, ki pišejo v drugem jeziku, kot je angleščina. Zdelo se mi je žalostno, da nanje ne bom nikoli naletela zaradi svojih bralnih navad. Zato sem se odločila, da si predpišem intenzivni tečaj globalnega branja. 2012 naj bi bilo zelo mednarodno leto za VB, bilo je leto londonskih olimpijskih iger. Zato sem si to vzela za časovni okvir, v katerem bi poskusila prebrati roman, zbirko kratkih zgodb ali biografijo iz vsake države na svetu. In to sem storila. Bilo je zelo razburljivo, naučila sem se nekaj neverjetnih reči in navezala nekaj čudovitih stikov, ki jih danes želim deliti vami.
But it started with some practical problems. After I'd worked out which of the many different lists of countries in the world to use for my project, I ended up going with the list of UN-recognized nations, to which I added Taiwan, which gave me a total of 196 countries. And after I'd worked out how to fit reading and blogging about, roughly, four books a week around working five days a week,
A začelo se je z nekaj praktičnimi težavami. Ko sem ugotovila, katerega izmed mnogih različnih seznamov držav na svetu naj uporabim za moj projekt, sem uporabila seznam, ki ga priznavajo Združeni narodi, ki sem mu dodala Tajvan in na koncu sem dobila 196 držav. Ko sem ugotovila, kako naj uskladim branje in bloganje o približno štirih knjigah na teden, s petimi dnevi dela na teden,
I then had to face up to the fact that I might even not be able to get books in English from every country. Only around 4.5 percent of the literary works published each year in the UK are translations, and the figures are similar for much of the English-speaking world. Although, the proportion of translated books published in many other countries is a lot higher. 4.5 percent is tiny enough to start with, but what that figure doesn't tell you is that many of those books will come from countries with strong publishing networks and lots of industry professionals primed to go out and sell those titles to English-language publishers. So, for example, although well over 100 books are translated from French and published in the UK each year, most of them will come from countries like France or Switzerland. French-speaking Africa, on the other hand, will rarely ever get a look-in.
sem se morala soočiti z dejstvom, da morda ne bom mogla dobiti knjig v angleščini iz vsake države. Samo okrog 4,5 odstotka literarnih del, letno objavljenih v VB, so prevodi, in številke so podobne za večino angleško govorečih držav. A delež prevedenih knjig, ki so objavljene v mnogih drugih državah, je veliko večji. 4,5 odstotka je že tako zelo malo, a ta številka vam ne pove, da veliko teh knjig prihaja iz držav z močnimi založniškimi mrežami, z veliko strokovnjakov, pripravljenih, da te naslove prodajo angleškim založnikom. Na primer, čeprav je več kot 100 knjig prevedenih iz francoščine in izdanih v VB vsako leto, jih večina prihaja iz držav, kot sta Francija in Švica. V francosko govoreči del Afrike pa po drugi strani le redko dobimo vpogled.
The upshot is that there are actually quite a lot of nations that may have little or even no commercially available literature in English. Their books remain invisible to readers of the world's most published language. But when it came to reading the world, the biggest challenge of all for me was that fact that I didn't know where to start. Having spent my life reading almost exclusively British and North American books, I had no idea how to go about sourcing and finding stories and choosing them from much of the rest of the world. I couldn't tell you how to source a story from Swaziland. I wouldn't know a good novel from Namibia. There was no hiding it -- I was a clueless literary xenophobe. So how on earth was I going to read the world?
Rezultat je, da je pravzaprav veliko narodov, ki imajo zelo malo ali sploh nič komercialno dostopne literature v angleščini. Njihove knjige ostajajo nevidne za bralce najbolj branega jezika na svetu. A kar se tiče branja sveta je bil zame največji izziv dejstvo, da nisem vedela, kje začeti. Ker sem celo življenje brala skoraj samo britanske in severno-ameriške knjige, nisem imela pojma, kako naj poiščem zgodbe in jih izberem iz večine preostalega sveta. Ne morem vam povedati, kako najti zgodbo iz Svazija. Ne poznam dobrega romana iz Namibije. Ni se dalo skriti - bila sem literarni ksenofob, ki nima pojma. Kako bom prebrala svet?
I was going to have to ask for help. So in October 2011, I registered my blog, ayearofreadingtheworld.com, and I posted a short appeal online. I explained who I was, how narrow my reading had been, and I asked anyone who cared to to leave a message suggesting what I might read from other parts of the planet. Now, I had no idea whether anyone would be interested, but within a few hours of me posting that appeal online, people started to get in touch. At first, it was friends and colleagues. Then it was friends of friends. And pretty soon, it was strangers.
Prositi sem morala za pomoč. Tako sem oktobra 2011 registrirala svoj blog, ayearofreadingtheworld.com (leto branja sveta) in na spletu objavila kratko prošnjo. Pojasnila sem, kdo sem, kako ozko moje branje, in prosila, da mi, kdor bi želel, pusti sporočilo s predlogom, kaj naj berem iz drugih koncev sveta. Nisem imela pojma, ali bo to koga zanimalo, a v nekaj urah po objavi poziva so me ljudje kontaktirali. Najprej so bili prijatelji in kolegi. Nato prijatelji prijateljev. In zelo kmalu, neznanci.
Four days after I put that appeal online, I got a message from a woman called Rafidah in Kuala Lumpur. She said she loved the sound of my project, could she go to her local English-language bookshop and choose my Malaysian book and post it to me? I accepted enthusiastically, and a few weeks later, a package arrived containing not one, but two books -- Rafidah's choice from Malaysia, and a book from Singapore that she had also picked out for me. Now, at the time, I was amazed that a stranger more than 6,000 miles away would go to such lengths to help someone she would probably never meet.
Štiri dni po objavi poziva sem dobila sporočilo od ženske iz Kuala Lumpurja, po imenu Rafidah. Povedala je, da ji je všeč zven mojega projekta, predlagala, da bi šla v svojo knjigarno z angleškimi knjigami, izbrala mojo malezijsko knjigo in mi jo poslala. Navdušeno sem sprejela in nekaj tednov kasneje je prišel paket ne z eno, ampak dvema knjigama - Rafidino izbiro iz Malezije in knjigo iz Singapurja, ki jo je prav tako izbrala zame. Takrat sem bila navdušena, da bi se tujka več kot 9000 km stran tako potrudila za nekoga, ki ga najbrž ne bo nikoli srečala.
But Rafidah's kindness proved to be the pattern for that year. Time and again, people went out of their way to help me. Some took on research on my behalf, and others made detours on holidays and business trips to go to bookshops for me. It turns out, if you want to read the world, if you want to encounter it with an open mind, the world will help you. When it came to countries with little or no commercially available literature in English, people went further still.
A Rafidina prijaznost je bila vzorec tistega leta. Spet in spet so se ljudje trudili, da bi mi pomagali. Nekateri so raziskovali namesto mene, drugi so naredili ovinek na počitnicah in poslovnih poteh, da so šli v knjigarno zame. Izkazalo se je, da če želiš prebrati svet, če bi ga rad srečal z odprtim umom, ti bo svet pomagal. V državah, kjer je zelo malo ali nič literature dostopne v angleščini, so šli ljudje še dlje.
Books often came from surprising sources. My Panamanian read, for example, came through a conversation I had with the Panama Canal on Twitter. Yes, the Panama Canal has a Twitter account. And when I tweeted at it about my project, it suggested that I might like to try and get hold of the work of the Panamanian author Juan David Morgan. I found Morgan's website and I sent him a message, asking if any of his Spanish-language novels had been translated into English. And he said that nothing had been published, but he did have an unpublished translation of his novel "The Golden Horse." He emailed this to me, allowing me to become one of the first people ever to read that book in English.
Knjige so pogosto prišle iz presenetljivih virov. Moje branje iz Paname, na primer, je prišlo skozi pogovor s panamskim prekopom na Twitterju. Ja, panamski prekop ima Twitter profil. In ko sem tvitala o svojem projektu, mi je predlagal, naj poskusim dobiti knjigo panamskega avtorja Juana Davida Morgana. Našla sem Morganovo spletno stran in ga vprašala, če so katerega izmed njegovih romanov v španščini prevedli v angleščino. Rekel je, da ni bilo nič objavljeno, a ima neobjavljen prevod romana "Zlati konj". Poslal mi ga je in mi s tem dovolil, da sem bila ena izmed prvih, ki je prebrala to knjigo v angleščini.
Morgan was by no means the only wordsmith to share his work with me in this way. From Sweden to Palau, writers and translators sent me self-published books and unpublished manuscripts of books that hadn't been picked up by Anglophone publishers or that were no longer available, giving me privileged glimpses of some remarkable imaginary worlds. I read, for example, about the Southern African king Ngungunhane, who led the resistance against the Portuguese in the 19th century; and about marriage rituals in a remote village on the shores of the Caspian sea in Turkmenistan. I met Kuwait's answer to Bridget Jones.
Morgan še zdaleč ni edini mojster besed, ki je z mano delil svoje delo na ta način. Od Švedske do Palaua so mi pisatelji in prevajalci poslali knjige, izdane v samozaložbi, in neizdane rokopise knjig, ki jih niso opazili založniki iz angleško govorečega sveta ali pa niso bile več na voljo in mi s tem dali vpogled v nekatere neverjetne domišljijske svetove. Brala sem, na primer, o južnoafriškem kralju Ngungunhaneju, ki je vodil upor proti Portugalcem v 19. stoletju in o poročnih obredih v odmaknjeni vasi na obalah Kaspijskega jezera v Turkmenistanu. Spoznala sem kuvajtski odgovor na Bridget Jones.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
And I read about an orgy in a tree in Angola.
In brala sem o orgiji na drevesu v Angoli.
But perhaps the most amazing example of the lengths that people were prepared to go to to help me read the world, came towards the end of my quest, when I tried to get hold of a book from the tiny, Portuguese-speaking African island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe. Now, having spent several months trying everything I could think of to find a book that had been translated into English from the nation, it seemed as though the only option left to me was to see if I could get something translated for me from scratch. Now, I was really dubious whether anyone was going to want to help with this, and give up their time for something like that. But, within a week of me putting a call out on Twitter and Facebook for Portuguese speakers, I had more people than I could involve in the project, including Margaret Jull Costa, a leader in her field, who has translated the work of Nobel Prize winner José Saramago. With my nine volunteers in place, I managed to find a book by a São Toméan author that I could buy enough copies of online. Here's one of them. And I sent a copy out to each of my volunteers. They all took on a couple of short stories from this collection, stuck to their word, sent their translations back to me, and within six weeks, I had the entire book to read.
A morda je najbolj neverjeten primer truda, ki so ga ljudje vložili, da bi mi pomagali prebrati svet, prišel pri koncu mojega potovanja, ko sem poskušala dobiti knjigo iz majhne portugalsko govoreče afriške otoške državice, Sao Tome in Principe. Ko sem več mesecev poskušala vse, česar sem se lahko domislila, da bi našla knjigo, ki je bila prevedena v angleščino iz te države, se mi je zdelo, da je edina možnost, da ugotovim, ali bi mi nekdo nekaj prevedel sam. Res sem dvomila, ali mi bo kdo pomagal s tem in svoj čas uporabil za kaj takega. A v enem tednu, ko sem objavila poziv na Twitterju in Facebooku za portugalsko govoreče, sem imela več ljudi, kot bi jih lahko vpletla v projekt, vključno z Margaret Jull Costa, vodilno na svojem področju, ki je prevedla dela Nobelovega nagrajenca Joséja Saramaga. S svojimi devetimi prostovoljci sem uspela najti avtorja iz Sao Tomeja, čigar knjigo sem lahko dobila v dovolj izvodih. Tu je eden izmed njih. Kopijo sem poslala vsakemu izmed svojih prostovoljcev. Vsak se je zadolžil za nekaj kratkih zgodb iz te zbirke, držal obljubo, mi poslal prevod in v šestih tednih sem imela celotno knjigo.
In that case, as I found so often during my year of reading the world, my not knowing and being open about my limitations had become a big opportunity. When it came to São Tomé and Príncipe, it was a chance not only to learn something new and discover a new collection of stories, but also to bring together a group of people and facilitate a joint creative endeavor. My weakness had become the project's strength.
V tem primeru, kot sem med svojim letom branja sveta velikokrat spoznala, je moje neznanje in moja odkritost glede lastnih omejitev postala velika priložnost. Pri Sao Tome in Príncipe je bila ne samo priložnost, da se naučim nekaj novega in odkrijem novo zbirko zgodb, ampak tudi združitev skupine ljudi in skupen ustvarjalni trud. Moja slabost je postala moč projekta.
The books I read that year opened my eyes to many things. As those who enjoy reading will know, books have an extraordinary power to take you out of yourself and into someone else's mindset, so that, for a while at least, you look at the world through different eyes. That can be an uncomfortable experience, particularly if you're reading a book from a culture that may have quite different values to your own. But it can also be really enlightening. Wrestling with unfamiliar ideas can help clarify your own thinking. And it can also show up blind spots in the way you might have been looking at the world.
Knjige, ki sem jih prebrala tisto leto, so mi odprle oči za mnogo stvari. Tisti, ki uživate v branju, veste, da imajo knjige neverjetno moč, da vas odpeljejo v misli nekoga drugega, tako da vsaj za nekaj časa gledate na svet skozi druge oči. To je lahko neprijetna izkušnja, še posebej če berete knjigo iz kulture, ki ima precej drugačne vrednote od vaših. A lahko je tudi razsvetljujoče. Bojevanje z neznanimi idejami vam lahko pomaga razjasniti vaše lastno mišljenje. Lahko vam pokaže slepe pege v vašem pogledu na svet.
When I looked back at much of the English-language literature I'd grown up with, for example, I began to see how narrow a lot of it was, compared to the richness that the world has to offer. And as the pages turned, something else started to happen, too. Little by little, that long list of countries that I'd started the year with, changed from a rather dry, academic register of place names into living, breathing entities.
Ko sem pogledala nazaj na literaturo v angleškem jeziku, s katero sem odrasla, sem ugotovila, kako ozkogleda je bila v primerjavi z razkošjem, ki nam ga lahko ponudi svet. In ko so se strani obračale, se je zgodilo še nekaj drugega. Po malem se je ta dolgi seznam držav, s katerim sem začela leto, iz suhoparnega, akademskega registra imen spremenil v bitja, polna življenja.
Now, I don't want to suggest that it's at all possible to get a rounded picture of a country simply by reading one book. But cumulatively, the stories I read that year made me more alive than ever before to the richness, diversity and complexity of our remarkable planet. It was as though the world's stories and the people who'd gone to such lengths to help me read them had made it real to me. These days, when I look at my bookshelves or consider the works on my e-reader, they tell a rather different story. It's the story of the power books have to connect us across political, geographical, cultural, social, religious divides. It's the tale of the potential human beings have to work together.
No, nočem namigovati, da je sploh mogoče dobiti zaokroženo sliko države preprosto z branjem ene knjige. A skupaj so me zgodbe, ki sem jih prebrala to leto, naredile bolj dovzetno kot kadarkoli prej za bogastvo, raznolikost in kompleksnost našega neverjetnega planeta. Bilo je, kot da bi zgodbe in ljudje, ki so se tako potrudili, da sem jih lahko prebrala, zame naredili svet resničen. Te dni, ko pogledam svoje knjižne police ali zgodbe na svojem e-bralniku, te povedo precej drugačno zgodbo. Je zgodba o moči knjig, da nas povežejo prek političnih, geografskih, kulturnih, socialnih, verskih razlik. Je zgodba o potencialu, ki ga imamo ljudje za sodelovanje.
And, it's testament to the extraordinary times we live in, where, thanks to the Internet, it's easier than ever before for a stranger to share a story, a worldview, a book with someone she may never meet, on the other side of the planet. I hope it's a story I'm reading for many years to come. And I hope many more people will join me. If we all read more widely, there'd be more incentive for publishers to translate more books, and we would all be richer for that.
In je pričanje o neverjetnih časih, v katerih živimo, in kjer je, po zaslugi interneta, lažje kot kadarkoli prej, da neznanka deli zgodbo, pogled na svet, knjigo z nekom, ki ga morda ne bo nikoli srečala, na drugem koncu planeta. Upam, da je to zgodba, ki jo bom brala še mnogo let. In upam, da se mi bo pridružilo še veliko ljudi. Če bi brali bolj na široko, bi bilo več vzpodbude za založnike, da prevedejo več knjig, in s tem bi vsi pridobili.
Thank you.
Hvala.
(Applause)
(Aplavz)